Radiologist 'would go back in a heartbeat'

Feb. 9, 2013

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Alice Hunt and more of the Home Hospital laboratory staff pose for this picture in 2004. Hunt first worked in respiratory therapy and then became a phlebotomist at the hospital. / Provided

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Like pieces of a puzzle, the workers at Home Hospital came together to create the bigger picture of caring for the community. But as they cared for others, they watched out for each other.

Alice Hunt was a single mother of three in 1976 when she decided to go back to school in respiratory therapy and started working at Home Hospital.

“It was fulfilling, knowing you were doing something to help in an emergency,” Hunt said.

But one day she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and after that she was unable to respond to emergencies like before. Her supervisor helped her transfer jobs and work as a phlebotomist in the lab.

“It helped that I was comfortable around blood, and I even helped train others,” Hunt said. “Home (Hospital) was family, and we took care of each other.”

It was a love of learning that helped Andrew Bowman as he started at Home Hospital as a young EMT in 1982. As he formed friendships with emergency room physicians, they urged him to continue school. He took their advice and today is an acute care nurse practitioner.

Marilyn Bennett said she remembers the talent Bowman had even as a young man. Bennett worked in radiology for 34 years and said Home Hospital always had a warm and friendly atmosphere. People would stop to chitchat, even if they worked in different departments, she said.

And all the radiologists knew everyone in the department by name, so each felt important and part of the team, Bennett said.

Hunt, Bowman and Bennett remain in touch with each other and with other former colleagues from Home. They have regular reunions and talk about the old days, Bennett said.

“In the end, I’d go back in a heartbeat,” she said. “All that I wish is for Home Hospital to be back and that we were all there again. It sounds silly to say.”